"Pointless," Xiao Lin remarked, his voice a dry whisper in the wind.
The idea of a mid-level Dou Wang trying to assassinate a man with a Heavenly State Soul was absurd. It was like a house cat trying to hunt a tiger. If Xiao Lin hadn't ended the fight in a single breath, he'd have felt the urge to find a block of tofu and slam his head against it out of pure embarrassment.
The God-Slaying Finger was Xiao Lin's own creation. By compressing the vast, erratic energy of Star Dou Qi into a microscopic point at his fingertip, he achieved a piercing power far beyond his Great Star Seal. As Yan Bohong's corpse hit the ground, a single, clean blood-hole was visible in his forehead—his brain had been vaporized instantly. It was a clean death.
Xiao Lin didn't hesitate. He stripped the Storage Ring from the corpse and performed a quick "body destruction" technique to erase the evidence.
As a veteran of the Luo Yan Royal Family, Yan Bohong was a walking treasury. A quick spiritual scan revealed hundreds of thousands of gold coins, along with a hoard of Grade 5 pills and Black Tier techniques.
"Truly, the road to riches is paved with the corpses of idiots," Xiao Lin mused. "They say 'murder and arson bring a golden belt,' and for once, the proverb isn't lying."
For a split second, Xiao Lin considered becoming a full-time predator. But his modern ethics quickly suppressed the thought. Killing a man who sought your life was justice; hunting innocent people for gold was a line he wasn't willing to cross. "A man is only a man as long as he has a bottom line," he reminded himself. Besides, in a world like this, a hunter eventually meets a "Lao Liu" like Xiao Lin and ends up as the prey.
With the distraction cleared, Xiao Lin turned his attention to the building he had discovered. It was a massive, nine-story structure that looked ancient and slightly decayed, yet it stood with a defiant, heavy presence.
The name on the plaque was weathered away, leaving only the final character: "閣" (Pavilion).
[Description: A towering, nine-story ancient Chinese pavilion with weathered wood and faint, glowing runes carved into the base]
Xiao Lin wasn't worried about the danger level. Based on the fact that this sect wasn't housed in its own independent space, he concluded it was, at most, a Dou Zun level inheritance. A Dou Sheng power would have carved out its own dimension. Furthermore, if a mere Rank 7 beast could shake the foundations of the sect's main array, the power here was likely closer to the peak Dou Zong or low Dou Zun tier.
With his Eight-Star Dou Huang strength and Heavenly State Soul, Xiao Lin felt confident. He stepped through the threshold.
The Watcher in the Dark
The moment Xiao Lin's boot touched the floorboards, a pair of eyes flickered open on the ninth floor. A sleeping soul, ancient and weary, stirred in the darkness.
"After all these eons... has someone finally arrived?" the soul whispered, its gaze piercing through the floors to lock onto Xiao Lin.
Xiao Lin stopped dead. His skin crawled with the sudden, prickly sensation of being watched. He immediately unleashed a massive wave of his Heavenly State Soul, scanning every crack in the wood and every shadow in the corners.
Nothing.
"A hallucination?" Xiao Lin frowned. But his instincts were screaming. There was something fundamentally wrong with this space, even if his eyes and soul couldn't pinpoint the threat. He forced his mind to settle, pushing the unease into a corner.
The first floor was vast and hauntingly empty. There were no shelves, no furniture, and—most disturbingly—no stairs.
In the absolute center of the hall, the only feature was a massive, circular black pattern etched into the floor.
"How do people get to the second floor?" Xiao Lin muttered, stroking his chin. "Did the disciples of this sect have to fly to the upper levels every time they wanted to change rooms?"
The absurdity of the layout only heightened his caution. He didn't approach the black circle immediately. He recognized that this pavilion might be a "Grand Prize" that rivaled the sect's main hall in importance—and in lethality.
Xiao Lin stood at the edge of the circle, his starlight-flecked eyes reflecting the darkness of the pattern. He was no longer just a treasure hunter; he was a master playing a game of chess against a ghost.
Faced with the eerie silence of the Nine-Tier Pavilion, Xiao Lin's first instinct—honed by his cautious "Gou" (survivalist) nature—was to turn around and walk out.
However, his rational mind stopped him. This is a Dou Zun heritage at best, he reminded himself. If this were a Dou Sheng's realm, I'd have retreated three miles the moment my skin crawled. But for a Dou Zun? I have the Heavenly State Soul. I can afford to gamble.
After a second, exhaustive sweep of the first floor revealed nothing but dust, he finally locked his gaze on the massive, black circular pattern in the center of the hall.
"The secret is here," he whispered.
Xiao Lin took a deep breath and stepped onto the ink-black design.
The moment his boots touched the center, the world shivered. Space twisted like a wrung cloth, and the very concept of "up" and "down" inverted. This sudden spatial turbulence would have sent a normal practitioner into a panic, but Xiao Lin's eyes widened with recognition.
It's an Array!
He didn't recognize it through raw power, but through the "useless" book he had bought at the Primer Auction. The Annotated Guide to Basic Formations lacked blueprints, but it was a masterclass in Theory and Identification. It taught the reader how to "read" the flow of energy.
"The One-Origin Array... the first of the Nine Foundations?"
The Lost Science of the Ancients
According to his guide, the ancient Dou Qi Continent once possessed Nine Basic Formations:
One-Origin (Monad)
Two-Polarity (Yin-Yang)
Three-Talent (Heaven-Earth-Man)
Four-Symbol (Cardinal Directions)
Five-Element (Wu Xing)
Six-Harmony (Directions/Space)
Seven-Star (Big Dipper)
Eight-Trigram (Ba Gua)
Nine-Palace (Magic Square)
Modern arrays, like the Yun Lan Sect's Cloud Mist Array or even the high-level Soul-Devouring Arrays, were merely distorted, pre-packaged derivatives of these nine. Because the knowledge of the "Basics" was lost, modern masters could only follow static blueprints. They couldn't innovate. They couldn't adapt.
[Description: A diagram of the Nine Basic Formations arranged in a spiral, representing the evolution of array logic]
But ancient masters used these nine as "Lego blocks," combining them to create infinite variations. Xiao Lin realized with a jolt that if he mastered these nine, he wouldn't just be an array user—he would be an Array Architect.
"If this pavilion has nine floors... then each floor is a trial for one of the foundations!" Xiao Lin's heart hammered against his ribs. "This isn't just a ruin; it's a Trial of Inheritance!"
High above on the ninth floor, the ancient soul felt a tremor of excitement.
"The Basic Guide... someone actually found the primer," the soul whispered, its form shimmering and becoming more solid. "Destiny is a strange weaver. Let us see if this boy has the wit to match his luck."
Xiao Lin dove back into his Storage Ring, frantically digging out the Annotated Guide he had previously used to "stabilize a table." He sat cross-legged in the center of the One-Origin Array and began to study it with a ferocity he usually reserved for his Star Manual.
Time became a blurred concept. To the outside world, he was standing still. In his mind, he was deconstructing the very fabric of the array.
Break... reconstruct... flow...
Suddenly, Xiao Lin's eyes snapped open, glowing with a sharp, azure light. With a flick of his wrist, the massive black pattern beneath him dissolved into sparks. Then, with another flick, he manifested the One-Origin Array back into existence from thin air.
First Trial: Mastered.
A pillar of white light engulfed him. When his vision cleared, he was on the Second Floor. The layout was identical, but the center now held the Two-Polarity Array.
"It really is a trial!" Xiao Lin laughed, his usual "Lao Liu" caution replaced by a scholar's greed. "Floor three will be Three-Talent... floor five will be the Five-Elements... and the ninth will be the Nine-Palaces!"
He stepped into the center of the Two-Polarity circle. The rest of the "Secret Realm"—the gold, the herbs, the treasures, the Luo Yan Empire—all vanished from his mind. To Xiao Lin, this pavilion was the only thing that mattered. He was no longer just a Dou Huang from the Jia Ma Empire; he was becoming the first Spirit Array Master the continent had seen in ten thousand years.